WOMEN QUOTES XX

quotations about women

The change needed to restore good feeling cannot be reached by remanding women to the spinning wheel, and the contentment of her grandmother, but by conceding to her every right which the spirit of the age demands. Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

introduction, History of Woman Suffrage


A woman's heart is much like the moon, always changing but always has a man in it.

GRENVILLE KLEISER

Dictionary of Proverbs

Tags: Grenville Kleiser


Hurry not a woman's favor; neither forcer her hastily to surrender to thee. For she goeth into love as she goeth into the waters at the seashore; first a hand and then a lip goeth she in by littles. She diveth not, she leapeth not from the pier; but by gentle shocks and cries of protest she entereth slowly; yet when the waters of love encompass her, then she is supported. She swimmeth in her joy; she floateth on the tide of happiness.

GELETT BURGESS

The Maxims of Methuselah


Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

The Scarlet Letter

Tags: Nathaniel Hawthorne


A woman's passion is like the tide, it stays for no man when the hour is come.

APHRA BEHN

The Lucky Chance

Tags: Aphra Behn


Whatever may be thought of "woman's sphere," it is certain that its boundaries have been steadily enlarged; that an increased liberty, not only of secular employments and civil rights, but also of social intercourse, has been accorded to her with increasing civilization; and that, so far from losing, either in the delicacy and refinement of her own character, or in the chivalric homage paid to her by man, she has gained in both respects in the same ratio in which she has been freed from the trammels of an unnatural conventionalism, and elevated to a position of real equality with the dominant sex.

LYMAN ABBOTT

Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths

Tags: Lyman Abbott


A woman's love, like lichens upon a rock, will still grow where even charity can find no soil to nurture itself.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


To sew is to pray. Men don't understand this. They see the whole but they don't see the stitches. They don't see the speech of the creator in the work of the needle. We mend. We women turn things inside out and set things right. We salvage what we can of human garments and piece the rest into blankets. Sometimes our stitches stutter and slow. Only a woman's eyes can tell. Other times, the tension in the stitches might be too tight because of tears, but only we know what emotion went into the making. Only women can hear the prayer.

LOUISE ERDRICH

Four Souls

Tags: Louise Erdrich


Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.

CESARE PAVESE

This Business of Living, February 19, 1937


There is nothing in the female sex more graceful or becoming than Modesty. It adds charm to their beauty, and gives a new softness to their sex. Without it simplicity and innocence appear rude; reading and good sense, masculine; wit and humour, lascivious. This is so necessary a quality for pleasing, that the loose part of the sex, whose study it is to ensnare men's hearts, never fail to support the appearance of what they know is essential to that end.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine

Tags: Wellins Calcott


A reproof entereth more into a woman of sense than an hundred compliments into a fool.

GELETT BURGESS

The Maxims of Methuselah


An artful or false woman shall set thy pillow with thorns.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER

Proverbial Philosophy

Tags: Martin Farquhar Tupper


Woman is the highest, holiest, most precious gift to man. Her mission and throne is the family, and if anything is withheld that would make her more efficient, useful, or happy in that sphere, she is wronged, and has not her rights.

JOHN TODD

Woman's Rights

Tags: John Todd


This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.

ROBERT WILSON LYND

Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions

Tags: Robert Wilson Lynd


As a woman, I have an inherent need to be all things to all people, to make certain everybody's taken care of. I know I can't sustain that level all the time, so I'm finding the proper balance and it's made me infinitely happier.

SARAH JESSICA PARKER

Woman's Day Magazine, September 12, 2007

Tags: Sarah Jessica Parker


Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated.

JOHN BERGER

Ways of Seeing

Tags: John Berger


You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman.

VLADIMIR LENIN

"The Tasks of the Working Women's Movement in the Soviet Republic", Collected Works

Tags: Vladimir Lenin


A man who from the beginning has long been soaked in the languid atmosphere of a woman, the scent of her hands, her bosom, her knees, her hair, her lithe and flowing clothes ... has acquired a delicacy of skin, a refinement of tone, a kind of androgyny without which the toughest and most virile of geniuses remains, when it comes to artistic perfection, an incomplete being.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

"Un mangeur d'opium"

Tags: Charles Baudelaire


Where neither love nor hatred is in the game, a woman's game is mediocre.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Beyond Good and Evil

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche


Woman loves or hates: she knows no middle course.

PUBLILIUS SYRUS

The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus